Limerick #2

There once was a elegant horse
Whose name was Jane of Course
When folks asked her why
She would simply reply
“‘Cus they named me Jane of Course”

-LittlePage1

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We just dropped A LOT of money on a program called Rosetta Stone to help teach french to the kids. We bought the Homeschool Edition, with Levels 1,2 and 3 French, and the Audio Companion CDs in a bundle. (And it was a bundle, let me tell you.)

I looked around on their website, and there is a tonne of information on how to use the Homeschool Edition on a network with “SMS”, their management program. It allows you to track users and lesson progress, and allows users to log on on and use the software from any machine on the network. The explanations and instructions are very clear, and are updated as of a few weeks ago. Yay! We have a home network and a number of machines around the place, this will be great!

Rosetta Stone French comes in the mail. I open the box. I take the CDs downstairs to install on the server. I look in the box again because there is no SMS disk.

I call tech support. I wait 10 minutes. They tell me that it’s all built in now, I don’t need a separate SMS install.

I try again. I beat my head on the desk. All of this beautiful documentation and none of it seems to match what’s on my screen or in the box.

I contact tech support via email. Their submit form is VERY broken, so it won’t allow “return” characters in the explanation of your question. I have URLs and references and multiple questions, and it takes me literally 10 minutes to figure out why this form won’t take my request. The error message I get cunningly neglects to mention that CR’s aren’t allowed. Grrr.

The response I get is this:

Hi [MrPages],

Rosetta Stone Version 3 Homeschool edition is not network-able. I apologize for the inconvenience. You may install the software on two computers.

Let us know if you have further questions.

Um. Hang on a sec.

I reply with a list of articles that seems to contradict this directly.

Hi [MrPages],

Those articles are for the Version 2 product. You have the Version 3, the newest Homeschool product. Version 2 is no longer available for the language you are studying as a homeschool version. The Version 3 Homeschool product is not compatible with home networks. I apologize for the inconvenience.

If you would like to return your product, please contact Customer Care.

I reply again, pointing to documentation that specifically mentions version 3, pointing to the fact that none of the documentation is labelled as version specific, and indicating my displeasure at the removal of functionality without any documentation of such, and in fact, with documentation out there that contradicts the removal.

Then I get this wonderfully concise summary of the issue:

There are two versions of the SMS, Version 2 and Version 3. There are two versions of homeschool products, Version 2 and Version 3. The Version 2 homeschool product works with both versions of the SMS. The SMS and Version 3 do NOT work together. The Version 3 product is an entirely different setup, and is not capable of networking.

So. You’ve used the same version numbers for two separate products that used to be bundled. Now they aren’t bundled, the old version of one works with the new version of the other, but the new version of the same one won’t work with the new version of the other.

Thanks. That’s brilliantly clear. Wonderful marketing, guys.

And, like suckers, we kept the program because it’s still the best way to learn a language. It’s so frustrating to be stuck in a position like this, trapped by incompetent documentation and marketingspeak into accepting less that we ordered. And just smiling and taking it.

Rosetta Stone, you have a good product, but you suck at customer service.

Barbara’s comment on this post led me to write a new post rather than reply in a long comment there.

Yes, the dads in our homeschool group get together for meetings. Yes, this is incredibly rare, from what I hear about homeschool groups and dads. Yes, it has been a very long road to get to this point, and it’s still in the development stages.

Our local homeschool support group has been together for a number of years and is about 12 families, give or take. Activity has ebbed and flowed over the years based on who felt the need to organize what. There has been a monthly “Moms Meeting” for almost seven years, but it varies between a defined conversation topic, a Q&A session and a chat-and-dessert night.

I think the issue for dads is that the moms see each other far more regularly than the dads do, because they get together for field trips, swimming lessons, play dates, all that sort of thing. The dads are usually working when all this happens. It used to be that the dads saw each other at the annual picnic, and one summer for weekly soccer lessons and that was it.

At those events, the dads have talked about “Oh, we should get together more often…” for years. Finally, last spring, a few of us decided to just set a date and see what happened. We’ve gone monthly since then, and they’ve been a great time.

Our meetings start late, around 8 or 8:15 because I work on Pacific Coast time so I don’t get off until 7pm. I have time to say “Hi!” to the kids and MrsPages and then head off to the meeting. We begin by just chatting for 10 or 15 minutes, the usual “So, what renovations have you done on your house lately, how’s work going?” kind of guy-talk. After that there is one dad designated to give a 5-or-so minute summary of how homeschooling works in his house. There are so many different methods and styles and curriculums and it’s a great thing to hear how the moms and dads work together in different ways. These short talks and the questions afterwards have been the most valuable part of our meetings.

Next is a short talk by someone (usually the person who did the “How We Homeschool” talk) (”usually” being defined as “It has been this way in the 3 times we’ve met so far”) on some topic that interests the speaker. Topics so far have been “The differences between schooling boys and girls”, “The Five Love Languages of Children” and “Informal Homeschooling”. The talks aren’t major productions, just a brief overview of a topic. They’ve mostly been based on a book that the presenter is reading or has read.

After this, we chat for a while about anything and then we pray together and then go home. It’s been a specific goal of ours to keep meetings short and end exactly when we said we would. Our hard deadline for ending is 10pm. We always set the next meeting date and speaker before we leave.

Because of the ages of the children in our group, most of the open conversations have tended towards dealing with becoming-teens. We as dads are seeing our children reach this stage and are trying to make the required changes to meet their and our needs. Talking it over with other dads is incredibly helpful. Everyone has come with a great idea that no one else has thought of, and everyone goes away with at least one new thing to try.

It has been great to come to the meeting with something on my mind and find out that others are struggling with the same thing, or that someone else was struggling and then resolved the issue and can discuss methods for doing so.

Now, to put all of this in perspective: The homeschool group has been together for seven years. In this time we have had three dads meetings, all in the last four months. We skipped last month because no one could come. We normally have 4 dads show up, out of 12 or so families. I hope you get the picture that this isn’t a model of superhuman dadliness, it’s just a few guys wanting to talk about stuff enough to get over the stigma of “man meetings”.

These three meetings have been powerful enough that I strongly suggest that if you are a man, you should find a few other men and meet together to talk about manly things. Godly manly things. It’s hard, and it’s uncomfortable, and it’s totally worth it.

I’m popping out of my home school planning frenzy for a quick moment to share a joke
I read on my MOMYS list:

How does a home schooler change a light bulb?

First, mom checks three books on electricity out of the library, then the kids make models of light bulbs, read a biography of Thomas Edison and do a skit based on his life.

Next, everyone studies the history of lighting methods, wrapping up with dipping their own candles.

Next, everyone takes a trip to the store where they compare types of light bulbs as well as prices and figure out how much change they’ll get if they buy two bulbs for $1.99 and pay with a five-dollar bill.

On the way home, a discussion develops over the history of money and also Abraham Lincoln, as his picture is on the five-dollar bill.

Finally, after building a homemade ladder out of branches dragged from the woods, the light bulb is installed.

And there is light.

Sometimes I get these brilliant ideas for enhancing our home school journey. I had one of these flashes a few weeks ago while I was boiling down a chicken carcass to make stock. As I took the last of the meat off the bones I thought, “Wow. I bet we could use these and rebuild a chicken out of all these bones!” So I diligently stripped and collected all the bones and the following week I sat down with my eager children for a little bit of spontaneous biology.

Do any of you realize how hard it is to build a chicken skeleton from a diagram downloaded from the internet?

It is nearly impossible. The youngest Pages wandered off shortly after I realized the complexity of the task. The older Pages took pity on me, watching my brilliant idea crumble around me and they stayed by my side encouraging me to persevere. And persevere we did.

I eventually had to thaw a chicken carcass that was in the freezer waiting to be made into stock, so we could try and figure out what bones went where.

LittlePage1 hot-gluing the spine.

“Help! I’ve fallen and can’t get up!”

LittlePage2 helps our friend to his feet.

The final pieces fall into place.

Four hours, and only a few leftover bones and I think we have a chicken!

I have used Alpha-Phonics to teach all my children to read. Some took longer and needed a more gentle approach. Some knew their phonics naturally, before I ever opened the book, but we went through it anyway, to reinforce what they had picked up along the way.

In the beginning I created a set of flashcards, based on a Readers as Leaders program that I borrowed from the library. I adapted them to suit the Alpha-Phonics program. I thought others might be interested in using them.

Alpha-Phonics Flashcards in pdf format.

They are designed to be printed double sided, on card stock, and then cut into individual cards. You may need to play around with your printer to figure out what will work for you.

A Quick Overview of How We Use Alpha-Phonics

Everyday (well, every day that we “do” school) I sit down with the child that is learning to read and we practice the flashcards. We usually have about 5 cards on the go at once. We will review cards the child has already mastered about once a week. After the flashcards, we snuggle on the couch and read a lesson from the Alpha-Phonics book. If the child reads the majority of the words correctly, with only a little prompting for me, I make a check mark at the top of the lesson. (Each lesson now has four check marks at the top - one for each child in my home that has learned read.) Then we read one of the Bob Books, or a selection from the McGuffey’s Eclectic Readers.

If a child cannot seem to get through a lesson without help, we put the book aside for a few weeks and just practice flashcards. With our oldest, she had great difficulty when we began introducing the sound of /e/ (in lesson 24). I would put Alpha-Phonics on the shelf for several weeks, pull it out and try again. This went on for over a year before something finally clicked and she passed the lesson.

LittlePage1 finished the Alpha-Phonics book after her seventh birthday. LittlePage2 was just over six. LittlePage3 will be almost nine by the time he finishes, and LittlePage4 is about halfway through at age six and half. I find that about two-thirds of the way through the program, they can beginning reading some short chapter books on their own. Some of the early books my children have read are:

Owls in the Family by Farley Mowat
Baby Island by Carol Ryrie Brink
Mother West Wind Stories by Thorton Burgess
Henry and Ribsy by Beverley Cleary (although not all of Cleary’s book pass muster in our home.)
The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary (although not all of Cleary’s book pass muster in our home.)
Nature Readers by Christian Liberty Press
The Voyages of Doctor Doolittle by Hugh Lofting

…to name a few.

We tried to stay away from all those early “introductory” readers at the library which are more twaddle than literature. To find quality, age-appropriate literature for your children check out:

The Sonlight catalogue offers excellent readers for each grade level. I do not use their curriculum, but I do order literature from them.
Simply Charlotte Mason offers some excellent suggestions, as well.
Ambleside Online offers a complete curriculum based on living books, most of which are available free for download from The Baldwin Project. We print many of these off and add them to our shelves. Some of them are truly lovely books that we cherish. I would offer a word of caution. Not every book is suitable for every family. We do not read any mythology and limit fairy tales. Please use prayer and your own discretion when choosing books for your children. When in doubt pre-read!

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to ask away.

MrsPages presented a seminar at the MACHS conference today on how we approach the early years of education. It was based on the Bluedorn’s approach to Classical education, as presented in their book “Teaching The Trivium”. I was so proud! She was awesome!

MrsPages presented our take on the Bluedorn’s model. We’ve rearranged the 10 things to reflect our priorities, and basically made them our own.

In a nutshell, get your children’s hearts close to God and close to you, let them explore their world, and expose them to great literature as much as you can. If you do that before they are 10, then you really don’t have to do much else. Once they turn 10 (or 11 or 12) then moving into formal schooling should be a breeze.

Here are the notes from the seminar, as we promised the people who came after we ran out of printed copies.

Thanks to the 50+ people who attended (you can’t see the other half of the room in the picture) and stayed afterwards for questions and discussion!

10 Things To Do Before Age 10 Handout in PDF format
10 Things To Do Before Age 10 Handout in OpenOffice format
10 Things To Do Before Age 10 Handout in Microsoft Word format

Our Family Schedule in PDF Format
Our Family Schedule in OpenOffice Format
Our Family Schedule in Microsoft Word Format

The first goal for our family in our list of What We Think God Wants for Our Family is:

1. To love God and have a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ

When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus replied, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.” (Matthew 22:37-38)

Now this may not seem like it has anything to do homeschooling, but the reality is if this is not the first, the most important, the whole center on which we build not only our homeschool, but our family life, than we have failed. We have failed as parents, and we have failed as Christ believers.

I once heard someone say that the only thing we get to take to heaven with us is other people. What a complete and utter failure to arrive there and know that my children will not follow me. I want to be able to say that, “I have no greater joy than this: to hear that my children are living according to the truth. 3 John 1:4″

Practically what does this mean though? MrPages is a concrete thinker. He wanted to know how we get from here to there. It occurred to me that according to John 15, the only way to judge ourselves and our children in this matter is to look at the fruit in our lives. Paul defines the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22 and 23 as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

So we have been studying the fruit of the Spirit. We’ve been looking at what scripture says about each aspect of the “fruit” and we’ve been trying to hold each other accountable to help cultivate this fruit. I don’t believe we can make this fruit grow, but I do think we can try to make sure the branch stays stuck to the tree of Christ, and in doing so, the fruit should be plentiful.

So after several weeks of prayer and study, I’ve revised our school schedule.

As I said before, my homeschool journey and recent insight have caused me to really question what I am supposed to be doing at home with my children. I’ve been worshipping knowledge instead of teaching my children to worship to God.

So after what feels like a lengthy hiatus, I am returning to put thoughts to paper (or keyboard as the case may be.)

Today I wanted to share the goals that MrPages and I set many years ago, dutifully filed, and then sort of forgot about. I’m going to list them as a complete set right now and then try to comment on each goal over the next few days.

We titled this revised version: What We Think God Wants for Our Family

1. To love God and have a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ
2. To serve God and others wholeheartedly
3. To pursue holiness
4. To love His Word
5. To live as ambassadors, proclaiming and sharing His message in a bold, logical and edifying manner
6. To be open to God’s life direction for us
7. To love and learn about His creation, all aspects of it
8. To seek out the knowledge that we need to be effective servants of Christ

These humble goals are to be my winnower, to help me separate the good from the best.

Library Day

Inspired by Swivels the Stickler.